Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Jan 29, 2017 6:12 pm

Iscander wrote: NuTrek: plot holes - definitely or very poorly handwaved at best with more interest in pacing. But as you say, no one really seems to care about NuTrek.
First of all, thank you for the quotations.
I read through them and I appreciate the attempt at rationalizing the nonsensical stuff that goes on. I found myself already seeing where problems stuck despite awkward handwaving but I thought it would be a waste of time to argue over them. Nobody really cares indeed. Trying to rationalize the plotholes would probably amount to more work than what was put into the scripts of those two movies combined.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Mon Jan 30, 2017 3:41 am

O,

The argument of character stupidity is not invariably wrong . . . sometimes that is even the point for a character . . . but it also shouldn't be the argument of first resort. You cannot simply handwave away character competence because it is inconvenient for your argument.

In the case of Elba II, moving to the far side may not have involved the simplistic advantages we are considering. Fir instance, suppose that the concern was that overloading the shield could cause an explosion, itself merely a hypothesis. This could be true anywhere an overload was executed. But maybe the issue was that the Enterprise phasers couldn't be tuned to the precise output to avoid it, whereas hitting the shield on the other side of the planet allowed a little more wiggle room due to the weakness of the shield at that point. That is to say, it isn't that they needed the weak spot to penetrate the shield, but that they hoped the stress level on the generator might be restrained a bit by penetrating it there.

Reasons why are mere conjecture as the episode only gives us the basics. Perhaps Scotty calculated offscreen that the XJ-47 graviton emitter oscillator resonance would likely be at counterpoint to the pergium generator frequency when the shield was phasered opposite the planet, compared to them being in sync and thus more boom-happy if atruck while on the near side, or some other damned thing that Voyager might've gone on at length about.

Without more detail, "lol they r teh dumdum" is a bullshit effort to evade the facts, *and is itself conjecture*.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Mon Jan 30, 2017 3:53 am

O,

A bluff is an effort to appear confidently able to do something you cannot do so as to alter the behavior of someone else. Be it in poker or in the context of a threat, it isn't a bluff if you can do the thing. If I have the cards to win and raise the bet, I am not bluffing. I am winning.

Suppose I tell you that if you keep arguing about the concept of a bluff, I will ban you. You can believe this is a bluff if you want, but it doesn't matter if I didn't tell you I hacked the board and have admin access. Your belief doesn't define whether it is a bluff or not. Only the outcome does. So if you call my "bluff" and keep yapping, then suddenly your user account is vaporized, I have proven it was not a bluff at all, but a valid and executed threat.

So, at best you could try to claim that Annorax thought Chakotay was bluffing, but you have argued consistently that it was Chakotay knowingly bluffing, which is utter bullshit.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Mon Jan 30, 2017 11:26 am

O,

While I try to account for language barriers where present, the thread has been more about logic barriers. Case in point is your attempt to ignore and sidestep simple analogies that demonstrate the flaws in your reasoning by playing (I hope) utterly dumb. For a specific example, note your response to the antivirus analogy. Instead of addressing the fact that the shield modifications are copyable information, a concept which defeats your strange claim that only the observed Mawasi and Nihydron ships could have protected their planets, you have instead engaged in utterly asinine efforts to nitpick the analogy. When defeated in those efforts you have simply tried to obfuscate by tossing out absurdities and straw men, such as the claim that I have declared all planets to be full cityscapes because interstellar space isn't the same as a rural land area. The fact you literally waste paragraphs on this is just extraordinary, and that you were consistent in such patterns of farce is just sad.

As I have said before, I don't mind honestly argued error. I don't like dishonest argumentation, though, be it on the right side or the wrong side, and indeed dishonestly-argued error is the most obnoxious and irritating form of argument, especially when wrapped in bald-faced nonsensicalisms. That's mere trolling. Your constant accusations and personal nonsense is just icing on that cake, especially when you suddenly get the vapors when the trollery is called by name.

Perhaps the most irritating part is that such nonsense, your pet windmill included, has sullied the thread which our new Iscander has put such good effort into since his arrival.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Mon Jan 30, 2017 11:44 am

sonofccn wrote:Going to be honest, I feel more than a little inadequate with titans of the old days like Mr. O and 2046 slugging it out. Because of that and, for better or worse, because I don't think I could possibly improve or say any better what 2046 has already argued I just want to tip my hat to both of you, apologize to Mr. O for any time he may feel I wasted and withdraw accepting our mutual difference of opinion.


Replace "titans of the old days" with "crotchety old bastards" and acknowledge that you argued the case better than I did for the most part and you're all set.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Jan 30, 2017 9:36 pm

Iscander wrote:Starting to repost these quotes for future reference.

First info dump post covers the conventional stuff.

Shields: Structure, Theater, Planetary
Weapons: Surface, Orbital

Federation Member Worlds
ST XI “Star Trek”

NERO: You will give me the frequencies to disable Earth's defenses. Centaurian slugs. They latch onto your brainstem, and release a toxin that will force you to answer. Frequencies please, sir.
PIKE: Christopher Pike, Captain, USS Enterprise, serial number...
ST I “The Motion Picture”

CHEKOV: All planetary defense systems have just gone inoperative.
TNG S4E1 “Best of Both Wolds pt2”

SHELBY: The Borg have dropped out of warp, sir. Jupiter outpost nine two reported visual contact at twelve hundred hours, thirteen minutes.
RIKER: Planetary defenses?
SHELBY: Responding. No reports on effectiveness but I can't believe that against the Borg…
[LATER…]
WORF: It is confirmed. The Borg have broken through the Mars defense perimeter.
TNG S5E8 “Unification pt2”

WORF: The Vulcan defense vessels are also responding. The Romulan force is retreating toward the Neutral Zone.
DS9 S4E11 “Homefront”

LEYTON: I don't know, but if you ask me, there's only one possible explanation.
ODO: Sabotage.
SISKO: The changelings.
ODO: Take down the power relays, and you neutralize sensors, transporters, surface-based defense installations.
SISKO: In other words, Earth is defenseless.
LEYTON: If the Dominion attacks now, we don't stand a chance.
DS9 S6E19 “In the Pale Moonlight”

SISKO: According to initial reports, the invasion force must have come from somewhere in the Calandra Sector.
DAX: Did Starfleet Intelligence know anything about the buildup?
WORF: No. They believed Calandra was too far from the Dominion supply lines to be a threat.
SISKO: There's plenty of blame to go around. The Tenth Fleet was supposed to be protecting Betazed and its outlying colonies, but it was caught out of position on a training exercise. What's worse, Betazed's own defense systems are obsolete and undermanned. The planet was theirs in less than ten hours.
KIRA: With Betazed in the hands of the Jem'Hadar, the Dominion is in a position to threaten Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, Alpha Centauri.
Federation Colonies and Outposts
TOS S1E14 “Balance of Terror”

HANSEN [OC]: Outposts two, three, and eight are gone. Unknown weapon. Completely destroyed, even though we were alerted. Had our deflector shield on maximum. Hit by enormous power. First attack blew our deflector shield. If they hit us again with our deflector shield gone. Do you read me, Enterprise?
[LATER…]
HANSEN [on viewscreen]: Enterprise, can you see it? My command post here. We're a mile deep on an asteroid. Almost solid iron. And even through our deflectors, it did this. Can you see?
[LATER…]
KIRK: Do you have phaser capacity? We're still out of range.
HANSEN: Negative. Phasers gone. Weapons crew dead.
KIRK: Make a challenge. Warn that ship off.
TOS S1E18 “Arena”

KIRK: Can you tell me what happened?
MAN: Scanners reported a ship approaching. We get them now and then. They're all welcome to use our facilities. You know that.
KIRK: Yes, I know.
MAN: They came in space normal speed, using our regular approach route, but they knocked out our phaser batteries with their first salvo. From then on we were helpless. We weren't expecting anything! Why should we? We didn't have anything anyone would want.
TOS S3E14 “Whom the God’s Destroy”

SCOTT: Immediate probe. Is the force field in place, Mister Sulu?
SULU: Yes, sir. Solidly.
UHURA: (at Spock's station) Life continues to exist on the planet.
MCCOY: Got to break through it somehow.
SCOTT: Doctor, I told you we couldn't do it without killing everyone in the asylum dome.
MCCOY: I know it, Scotty.
SCOTT: Well, there's one last thing we might try. Perhaps the ship's phasers can cut through a section of the force field at its weakest point. Where did you say that was located, Mister Sulu?
SULU: On the far side of the planet, Mister Scott.
TOS S3E18 “The Lights of Zetar”

UHURA: Sir, I'm unable to establish contact with the planetoid. I'm hailing on all frequencies. No response.
SPOCK: It is of little consequence, Captain. Memory Alpha has no protective shields.
KIRK: No shields?
SPOCK: None, Captain. When the library complex was assembled, shielding was considered inappropriate to its totally academic purpose. Since the information on the Memory planet is available to everyone, special protection was deemed unnecessary.
TNG S5E13 “The Masterpiece Society”

HANNAH: Good news, Aaron. We should be able to change the course of the core fragment, but we'll also need to fortify the structure. And we're going to need help to do it.
LAFORGE: We'll need to bring down engineering crews from the Enterprise to work with your people for the next forty eight hours.
CONOR: Engineering crews?
LAFORGE: They have to install five new shield generators and power supplies.
HANNAH: Fifty officers are waiting for your approval to transport down. We don't have much time, Aaron.
TNG S7E4 “The Gambit pt1”

DATA: But it is only a small science station. It has limited defensive capabilities. I do not believe it could withstand an attack from the mercenary ship. Mister Worf. Send a message to the Federation outpost on Calder Two. Advise them that if a ship matching the mercenary vessel approaches, they should attempt to delay it until our arrival. Ensign, take us out of orbit. Set course for the Calder system. Warp nine.
[LATER…]
VEKOR: What are their defenses?
BARAN: Nothing to worry about. They have a type four deflector shield protecting the outpost and the ruins.
PICARD: They also have a minimum of two phaser banks and possibly photon torpedoes. Is that enough to worry about?
Klingon
ENT S2E19 “Judgment”

ORAK: Captain Duras, tell the tribunal about your encounter with the accused.
DURAS: I am no longer a captain.
ORAK: Explain.
DURAS: I am a second weapons officer serving on the Ty'Gokor defense perimeter.
ENT S4E16 “Divergence”

REED: They're firing on the colony.
T'POL: Target their disruptors!
[Laboratory]
(The room rocks to weapons fire.)
ARCHER: How strong are the shields around this place?
K'VAGH: Not strong enough. You said you had two ships in orbit!
TNG S3E17 “Sins of the Father”

DATA: Commander, I have discovered the basis of the charges against Worf's father. Apparently the Klingons recently captured a Romulan ship with logs that provided new information on the Khitomer attack. They clearly indicate a transmission from the outpost to the Romulan ship moments before the shields went down.
LAFORGE: From Worf's father?
DATA: They do correspond to Mogh's personal security code.
RIKER: How can we be sure these records haven't been falsified?
[LATER…]
[Great Hall]
DURAS: The Romulans lowered the outpost shields themselves. They were given the defense access code! The record clearly show the Romulan patrol ship receiving a personal transmission from Mogh seconds before the shields fell.
DS9 S4E2 “Way of the Warrior pt2”

DAX: Captain, I'm receiving a priority one message from Starfleet Intelligence. The Klingons are refusing to give up several of the Cardassian colonies they seized during the invasion. They're fortifying their positions and deploying orbital defense systems.
KIRA: Looks like the Klingons are here to stay.
DS9 S5E1 “Apocalypse Rising”

SISKO: According to Starfleet intelligence, Chancellor Gowron has relocated Klingon military headquarters to Ty'Gokor.
WORF: That will make our job more difficult. Ty'Gokor is located in an asteroid field deep in Klingon space. It is probably the most heavily fortified installation in the Empire.
SISKO: There are at least thirty warships stationed there at any given time and the entire asteroid field is protected by a tachyon detection grid.
O'BRIEN: Which means there's no way we can get a cloaked ship within transporter range.
DS9 S5E1 “Apocalypse Rising”

DAMAR: Personally, I think we'd be better off launching an orbital assault on Gowron's command center. A full spread of photon torpedoes would take care of him, the Klingon High Command and everyone else within a few hundred kilometers.
ODO: You should ask Dukat for some shore leave. I think you've been in space too long.
DAMAR: Why? Because I'm willing to spill a little Klingon blood to get the job done?
O'BRIEN: Shelling Ty'Gokor won't get the job done. You'd be lucky to launch one torpedo before they shot you down. Besides, even a dozen won't penetrate the shielding around the command center.
Romulan
DS9 S7E1 “Images in the Sand”

KIRA: The hospital isn't the problem.
ROSS: Then what is?
KIRA: The seven thousand plasma torpedoes the Romulans have secretly deployed there.
Cardassian
DS9 S4E14 “Return to Grace”

DAMAR: Sir, we're approaching the outpost on Korma, or what's left of it.
DUKAT: What are you talking about?
DAMAR: From what we can tell, it's been attacked. The planetary defense systems have been disabled. Every building has been destroyed.
[LATER…]
DUKAT: Because the outpost's planetary defense weapons are system five disruptors. They were never designed to operate aboard a moving spacecraft, and this cargo bays were never designed to hold them.
DS9 S6E26 “Tears of the Prophets”

DAMAR: Not as vulnerable as you think. We don't need starships to protect Chin'toka. Not anymore. These are our new unmanned orbital weapon platforms. Their hulls are protected by regenerative forcefields and their arsenals consist of a thousand plasma torpedoes.
Dominion
DS9 S7E7 “Once More Unto the Breach”

MARTOK: I'm going to send the Malpara and Ning'tao in ahead of the rest of the squadron. They'll make a single strafing run on the base and then head out of the system. When the enemy sends out their repair crews to assess the damage, then the rest of the squadron will decloak. With any luck, we'll catch them not only unprepared but with their entire damage control effort underway.
[LATER…]
KOLANA: Their shields are down to sixty five percent. Three Cardassian cruisers are in spacedock, orbiting the far side of the planet. Two of them are getting underway. The Malpara and the Ning'tao have completed their attack.
KOLANA: The Malpara is gone. No survivors. Ning'tao is heading out of the system. The Cardassians are pursuing.
MARTOK: Leaving their base unprotected. Helm, take us in. Bring us to a hover three hundred meters above the base. Stand by to decloak on my command.
SYNON: Holding at three hundred meters.
MARTOK: Scan the base.
KOLANA: They've dispatched damage control teams. Two defense batteries are out and they've just dropped their primary shield grid.
MARTOK: Decloak the ship and open fire.
Random Alien Species
TNG S1E17 “When the Bough Breaks”

Captain's log, stardate 41509.1. Either by chance or intent, we've been led to the planet Aldea, which appeared out of nowhere, hidden behind a sophisticated shielding device.
[Bridge]
DATA: Sensors indicate that the shield is electromagnetic, a complicated light refracting mechanism.
PICARD: A cloaking device?
DATA: Aye, sir.
LAFORGE: It's got to be pretty sophisticated to hide an entire planet .
TNG S5E14 “Conundrum”

DATA: Sensors show several objects in our path, sir. They are twenty nine meters in length and are unmanned.
MACDUFF: According to Starfleet records, they're sentry pods programmed to defend their Central Command.
RIKER: I'm reading forty seven of them around the perimeter.
PICARD: Tactical analysis, Mister Data.
DATA: The pods are equipped with fusion-generated pulse lasers and minimal shielding.
VOY S2E12 “Resistance”

KIM: I've been studying their orbital sensor net. It surrounds the entire planet. This is the most sophisticated system I've ever seen. It monitors everything we do. There's no way of disabling it from orbit.
CHAKOTAY: So much for a surprise attack.
KIM: We may still be able to surprise them, even if they do see us coming. We can modify the main deflector to send out dozens of radion beams which should penetrate the prison shields. One of them will carry our transporter signal but the sensor net won't be able to distinguish which one, so the Mokra won't know the exact location we're beaming to.
CHAKOTAY: And they won't know where to concentrate their defenses.
KIM: That's the best head start I can give you.
CHAKOTAY: Then it'll have to do. How long will it take to modify the deflector?
KIM: I can do it right now.
CHAKOTAY: Chakotay to Paris. Is the rescue team ready?
PARIS [OC]: Standing by.
CHAKOTAY: Prepare for transport.
KIM: Deflector ready, Commander.
CHAKOTAY: Initiate the radion beams.
KIM: Sending out the first volley. It's working. They're getting through the shields.
CHAKOTAY: Begin the transport.
KIM: Transporter room two, synchronize your confinement beams to (Boom!) That came from the surface.
CHAKOTAY: Maximum shields. Damage report.
KIM: Shields at ninety percent. It's a precision hit right to the source of the beams. Main deflector is now offline. We're being hailed from the surface.
CHAKOTAY: On screen.
AUGRIS [on viewscreen]: Your attempt to penetrate our defenses is a hostile act against the Mokra Order. There are now eighty five phased ion cannons targeted at your ship. If you don't withdraw from Mokra space in two minutes, we will open fire.
VOY S7E8 “Nightingale”

LOKEN: Our world has been under an Annari blockade for three years. The planet is protected by a shield grid, but it's almost impossible to get our ships in or out.
VOY S7E23 “Homestead”

NEELIX: Hypothetically, if they wanted to defend the asteroid, how would they do it?
TUVOK: To begin with they would need to establish some kind of perimeter.
NEELIX: You mean shields?
TUVOK: Yes. The miners are monitoring the asteroid. If they detected the Talaxians erecting a shield, they would attempt to stop them.
[LATER…]
NEELIX: I know from personal experience that you have forcefield emitters. We could use them to establish a shield grid. We'd need to deploy a series of them on the asteroid's surface, along bisecting diameters. Sixteen emitters should be enough to form a grid.
OXILON: Even if you're right, it'd take weeks to dig that many tunnels to the surface.
NEELIX: Commander Tuvok suggested that we could modify the emitters so they could be fired from torpedo tubes on your ship and planted in the surface.
OXILON: As soon as the miners realized what we were doing, they'd attack.
NEELIX: I could provide cover from my ship. But you're right, we'd have to work quickly.
DEXA: We could route power to the emitters directly from the core. They'd have a permanent energy supply.
Are those the ones you had posted on page one already?

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Iscander » Mon Jan 30, 2017 10:31 pm

There was an error with my account when JMS cleaned out the spam bots last time. That post didn't get recovered when he reactivated my account so I reposted it.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Jan 31, 2017 12:26 am

2046 wrote:O,

The argument of character stupidity is not invariably wrong . . . sometimes that is even the point for a character . . . but it also shouldn't be the argument of first resort.
Sorry but... says who? Analysis of character dialogue doesn't rank lower than pixel measurement for one. Perhaps some people prefer visual analysis than using transcripts, I don't know, but that's just a matter of taste.
When we look at transcripts, we essentially take the data on the principle that, unless told otherwise, characters display logical behaviour and don't act as if relying on an IQ of 70. It's precisely when we spot anomalies that we try to patch the holes with rationalizations.
You cannot simply handwave away character competence because it is inconvenient for your argument.
Well, it's a bit problematic as my argument was precisely based on the observation of silly behaviour. The theory is directly an answer to this observation, according to a scientific method.
Besides, I don't get the impression of handwaving character competence. Because I am actually expecting competence and that is why I provide a theory to explain what appears abysmally stupid without such an explanation.
In the case of Elba II, moving to the far side may not have involved the simplistic advantages we are considering. Fir instance, suppose that the concern was that overloading the shield could cause an explosion, itself merely a hypothesis. This could be true anywhere an overload was executed. But maybe the issue was that the Enterprise phasers couldn't be tuned to the precise output to avoid it, whereas hitting the shield on the other side of the planet allowed a little more wiggle room due to the weakness of the shield at that point.
That is to say, it isn't that they needed the weak spot to penetrate the shield, but that they hoped the stress level on the generator might be restrained a bit by penetrating it there.
Why, hello! That is literally what I have been saying since day one. Thanks for catching up! :)
The weakness would allow them to attempt getting through the shield without having to go full power on weapons. The fact that they narrow beams fits very well into that: even if they were to decrease the overall power in order to avoid the overload, the reduction of surface area exposed to the phaser beams would allow the crew to maintain the same intensity per square meter. That is exactly what I'd expect of characters trying to avoid reaching a threshold that would overload the shield.
Reasons why are mere conjecture as the episode only gives us the basics. Perhaps Scotty calculated offscreen that the XJ-47 graviton emitter oscillator resonance would likely be at counterpoint to the pergium generator frequency when the shield was phasered opposite the planet, compared to them being in sync and thus more boom-happy if atruck while on the near side, or some other damned thing that Voyager might've gone on at length about.
Such conjecture isn't necessary though.
Without more detail, "lol they r teh dumdum" is a bullshit effort to evade the facts, *and is itself conjecture*.
Regardless of that discourse on behavioural studies, we're left with a single, never seen again, UFP planetary shield with very specific traits I already listed several times now, including projected strength and supplemental effects.



2046 wrote:O,

A bluff is an effort to appear confidently able to do something you cannot do so as to alter the behavior of someone else.
Like claiming your incoming friends must have devised a way to deal some damage to a mighty spaceship despite that being actually untrue?
Be it in poker or in the context of a threat, it isn't a bluff if you can do the thing. If I have the cards to win and raise the bet, I am not bluffing. I am winning.
Suppose I tell you that if you keep arguing about the concept of a bluff, I will ban you. You can believe this is a bluff if you want, but it doesn't matter if I didn't tell you I hacked the board and have admin access. Your belief doesn't define whether it is a bluff or not. Only the outcome does. So if you call my "bluff" and keep yapping, then suddenly your user account is vaporized, I have proven it was not a bluff at all, but a valid and executed threat.
So, at best you could try to claim that Annorax thought Chakotay was bluffing, but you have argued consistently that it was Chakotay knowingly bluffing, which is utter bullshit.
It seems Annorax considered Chakotay honest. Annorax really comes off as the trusty kind.
The point is that Chakotay wasn't telling the truth, was he? Janeway had no way to damage the ship and she had never found a way to do so either.

The only way for Chakotay's remark not to be a bluff is for him to actually imply that some people of Annorax's crew would betray him: because that is the only truth and the only reason the Krenim time fiddlers lost.
So it's quite simple.
Do you hear something like "hey Annorax, surely my captain and her new friends wouldn't attack unless someone from your crew would betray you and shut down the temporal core" ?
Not a bluff on Chakotay's part, but it would also very likely trigger a typical smug Tarkinish reaction from Annorax to this probability, if not enrage him outright (he trusts his crew).

That's really not the feeling I get.
My impression is really that Chakotay is trying to have Annorax to stand down by suggesting super captain and friends have found a way to put a hole in the TWS all by themselves and that's why Janeway is confidently leading the charge now (with a very damaged ship!), a thing she wouldn't do otherwise.
Which is bull but, well, at this point, anything goes and it doesn't cost much to try, does it?

If you go with the first interpretation, okay, that would not be a bluff but it is extremely unlikely, not to say stupid considering how it would endanger the very success of the entire operation by bringing to Annorax' mind the possibility of a mutiny coordinated with this convenient bold assault from those ships led by Janeway.

If you go with the second one, it is a bluff. Chakotay made shit up, attempting to maximize the chances of bringing Annorax to his senses.



2046 wrote:O,

While I try to account for language barriers where present,
We may try English instead of Americanese?
the thread has been more about logic barriers. Case in point is your attempt to ignore and sidestep simple analogies that demonstrate the flaws in your reasoning by playing (I hope) utterly dumb. For a specific example, note your response to the antivirus analogy. Instead of addressing the fact that the shield modifications are copyable information, a concept which defeats your strange claim that only the observed Mawasi and Nihydron ships could have protected their planets, you have instead engaged in utterly asinine efforts to nitpick the analogy.
What is there to address here? The first option with the ships doing the defense was awkward ("they" = "those ships"). I didn't see as awkward until I read the transcript and gathered more information about the episode (I already said that, please try to remember) and saw that Chakotay had not refered to anything else but those ships and the home worlds.
The second option ("they" = "home worlds") obviously included ships sending the data to their respective home worlds.
So there doesn't even begin to be a problem about the capacity of copying info (that is, transmitting electronic/quantum data to a distant place) because that was quite implied in the concept of ships communicating with their home worlds. So I'm really puzzled as to your remark. Regardles of your opinion on the work, what you say is nothing short of a strawman argument.
We actually spent several posts, then, arguing over the merits of what it meant to have home worlds defend their planets (the second option, actually option B from the earlier posts of mine).
This only happened because I pointed out that the grammar was less than stellar, but considering the tense situation, it could be explained and excused. To make much more sense, "they" would have to be more generic and refer to the people (or species) so "they" –as these alien people– could defend their planets. But these subjets never surfaced in Chakotay's lines.
When defeated in those efforts you have simply tried to obfuscate by tossing out absurdities and straw men, such as the claim that I have declared all planets to be full cityscapes because interstellar space isn't the same as a rural land area.
So non sequitur I guess. Please reword your paragraph so it more accurately fits with your opinion and perhaps it will be possible to understand where you were going with this reference to some rural land, space civilizations and intriguing cityscapes. That is, only IF you want to talk about the analogy. Otherwise, let's just forget about it.
The fact you literally waste paragraphs on this is just extraordinary, and that you were consistent in such patterns of farce is just sad.
Quit being sad please, I'm gonna cry too. :(
As I have said before, I don't mind honestly argued error. I don't like dishonest argumentation, though, be it on the right side or the wrong side, and indeed dishonestly-argued error is the most obnoxious and irritating form of argument, especially when wrapped in bald-faced nonsensicalisms. That's mere trolling. Your constant accusations and personal nonsense is just icing on that cake, especially when you suddenly get the vapors when the trollery is called by name.

Perhaps the most irritating part is that such nonsense, your pet windmill included, has sullied the thread which our new Iscander has put such good effort into since his arrival.
Really. Three posts, the first two being quite civil and reasonnable. The last one, a full blown attack reeking off of projections and empty claims, followed a long winded lecturing on the arts of trolling, finally ending with another attempt at sucking on the tits of anyone who ever posted here in order to gain some support by proxy. You really just can't help.
Yes, Iscander's quotations were very appreciated. But who gave you a right to decide what could be argued regarding planetary defenses in a thread about planetary defenses? OK. OK. I understand. You don't get your ubiquitous planetary shields in Trek, or even in the UFP, you're sad. We got that. There, have some paper tissue and quit whining. Thanks.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:37 pm

I started a point by point rebuttal to illuminate your many errors of reasoning and false, concocted claims and wrong-headed patterns of obfuscatory argumentation (e.g. your response to the character stupidity point in which you run and hide in a general strawman about dialog analysis), but I think the bluff argument is truly the crux of the matter, despite being a minor element of the shield debate. Why? See here:
2046 wrote:O,

A bluff is an effort to appear confidently able to do something you cannot do so as to alter the behavior of someone else.
Like claiming your incoming friends must have devised a way to deal some damage to a mighty spaceship despite that being actually untrue?


The only liar is you. I don't say that often, but your argument has gone beyond mere stupidity or even obstinate foot-stomping into intentional dishonesty. That you won't acknowledge the fact that your claim of a bluff is wrong is a microcosm of your problems in this thread.

To review, Paris had already explained to Chakotay that the weapon-ship was easy pickings without its temporal core displacing it from normal spacetime. Paris had already outlined the plan to Chakotay of bringing the core offline, and the plan concocted by Paris and Chakotay was explicitly to have Janeway attack at that time. A message was sent to Janeway and she later indicated knowledge of Tom's plan during the battle.

Ergo, Chakotay's warning to Annorax that Janeway wouldn't be attacking unless she knew she could do damage is precisely correct in every way. It was not a bluff, not deceptive, and not wrong.

Again, stop embarrassing yourself. I realize you're liable to take irrational flights of fancy in this thread (e.g. the claim that my mention of other readers and thread participants constitutes a cry for assistance, which is pretty hilarious since I am not exactly known for coalition-building or team efforts). However, planting your standard on such stupidly obvious and readily-accessible falsehoods is going to convince no one of the rest of your claims.

Oh, and one more thing. I don't *need* Trek to have planetary shields, as your foolish effort to ascribe motivations to me suggests. (Hell, you can't even properly assess *explicit motivations* from a TV show, so it is little wonder that I would also perplex you and that you'd miss wide when you imagined implicit ones.)

If, as you are trying to imply, I was trying to be a Trek version of Wong, Saxton, Young, et al. and wank Trek, I *still* wouldn't need planetary shields. Trek planetary weapons can slice and dice Wars ships at tremendous range. Structure shields could protect critical facilities more than adequately for any attackers that weren't cinders already. And so on.

Planetary shields are simply the conclusion of those of us who honestly assess the evidence. It may be possible for someone to honestly disagree, but based on this thread that person is not you. Stand down.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Feb 01, 2017 2:45 pm

2046 wrote:I started a point by point rebuttal to illuminate your many errors of reasoning and false, concocted claims and wrong-headed patterns of obfuscatory argumentation (e.g. your response to the character stupidity point in which you run and hide in a general strawman about dialog analysis), but I think the bluff argument is truly the crux of the matter, despite being a minor element of the shield debate. Why? See here:
2046 wrote:O,

A bluff is an effort to appear confidently able to do something you cannot do so as to alter the behavior of someone else.
Like claiming your incoming friends must have devised a way to deal some damage to a mighty spaceship despite that being actually untrue?


The only liar is you. I don't say that often, but your argument has gone beyond mere stupidity or even obstinate foot-stomping into intentional dishonesty. That you won't acknowledge the fact that your claim of a bluff is wrong is a microcosm of your problems in this thread.

To review, Paris had already explained to Chakotay that the weapon-ship was easy pickings without its temporal core displacing it from normal spacetime. Paris had already outlined the plan to Chakotay of bringing the core offline, and the plan concocted by Paris and Chakotay was explicitly to have Janeway attack at that time. A message was sent to Janeway and she later indicated knowledge of Tom's plan during the battle.

Ergo, Chakotay's warning to Annorax that Janeway wouldn't be attacking unless she knew she could do damage is precisely correct in every way. It was not a bluff, not deceptive, and not wrong.
You left out the very important fact that Chakotay replied to Annorax.
We agree that Janeway wouldn't attack stupidly. The issue, however, is to know what Chakotay really tries to achieve based on the knowledge of the person he's trying to convince.
That person is Annorax, so it's important to consider Annorax's position here.
Chakotay was replying to Annorax who was feeling totally safe because of the temporal field and didn't fear anything about the ships charging them:
[Krenim Timeship - Bridge]

OBRIST: Sir, six vessels are approaching our position.
ANNORAX: Identify.
OBRIST: Three Nihydron warships, two Mawasi cruisers, and Voyager.
ANNORAX: We're outside space-time, impervious to their weapons. Let them come.
CHAKOTAY: I know Captain Janeway. She wouldn't be attacking unless she knew she could do some damage.
The context is that Chakotay's statement came as a sort of rebuttal to Annorax's warm boast. The use of the verb "knew" regarding Janeway is even more interesting here as the positive claim about one's knowledge is an essential part of a bluff.
Essentially, it all boils down to deciding between Chakotay's general statement trying to imply:
1. that Janeway had their own way to punch through the temporal field (after all, they nullified the advantage of chronoton torpedoes some time earlier in the year, thanks to their resident ex-Borg's help). This is the knowledge she supposedly holds, to win. Essentially, refering to the idea that Janeway's gang possesses an ability of their own making to deal damage, which we know they actually never ever had.
or
2. that since the temporal field is like a god-mode defense in Annorax's mind, the only way to damage the TWS is to get said field down in a fashion that does not originate from outside (outside = Janeway & Pals). Ergo inside. Which, considering the reliability of this temporal core that's been working for something like two hundred years and didn't suffer any notable failure even when pumped up to genocidal levels, would only leave one single option, with the core being deactivated from within.

Chakotay's remark offers some leeway to swing both ways, so it's really up to the audience to decide of the likeliness of either options.
In context, Chakotay's remark can only be true (not half true or else but plain true) if you include the implication of an action from inside the Krenim side/TWS, most likely a mutiny, which I find particularly stupid because Chakotay would geopardize the chances of success by alerting Annorax to this possibility.
It would be the most dangerous and inept thing to do, at that very moment, to even give a hint of a clue that the reliable temporal core could be endangered from inside the ship.
Yet it seems to be what you're going with.

We could probably continue arguing this for ages and never come to an agreement regarding Chakotay's first sentence, as far as I'm concerned, this is closed.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this notion of bluff for the first part of Chakotay's remark.

However, that still leaves the second part, with that sentence about the defense of planets.

You have not clarified your statement regarding space civilizations, rural areas and whatnots. Please do so or I'll consider your point invalid.

You have also not replied on the projected capacity of planetary shields for the Nihydron and Mawasi that reasonnably shows them to be so weak that they wouldn't matter against the TWS, making Chakotay's remark another piece of pure pretense. Do you have any solid logic to refute that?

You have not explained why we should believe that aliens who can't assemble more than two warships (weaker than Voyager) for the defense of their entire species would yet have the resources for deploying mighty planetary shields. It isn't logical.

Again, stop embarrassing yourself. I realize you're liable to take irrational flights of fancy in this thread (e.g. the claim that my mention of other readers and thread participants constitutes a cry for assistance, which is pretty hilarious since I am not exactly known for coalition-building or team efforts).
Yet it is exactly what you do, with this appeal to the respect of the readers' time and then Iscander's efforts while debasing my posts as somewhat an offense to both of them, in order to drag these people towards your virtuous side. Truth said, it's really not a good sign of your belief in the strength of your own arguments if you lower yourself to such tricks. Of course you're going to deny doing that, just as you previously denied sniping whole sections of my posts. Such is life.
However, planting your standard on such stupidly obvious and readily-accessible falsehoods is going to convince no one of the rest of your claims.

Oh, and one more thing. I don't *need* Trek to have planetary shields, as your foolish effort to ascribe motivations to me suggests. (Hell, you can't even properly assess *explicit motivations* from a TV show, so it is little wonder that I would also perplex you and that you'd miss wide when you imagined implicit ones.)

If, as you are trying to imply, I was trying to be a Trek version of Wong, Saxton, Young, et al. and wank Trek, I *still* wouldn't need planetary shields. Trek planetary weapons can slice and dice Wars ships at tremendous range. Structure shields could protect critical facilities more than adequately for any attackers that weren't cinders already. And so on.
Claims of firepower or dick length are irrelevant. I was making a comparison between your methods and *theirs* when you all debated Star Wars and Star Trek, when yours turn out to be much less incisive when debating in favour of Trek. I simply posited biased and emotionnal motives as an explanation for your inconsistency.
Planetary shields are simply the conclusion of those of us who honestly assess the evidence. It may be possible for someone to honestly disagree, but based on this thread that person is not you. Stand down.
I simply assess the evidence too. What we see is that you have an extremely loose collection of very isolated cases of planetary force fields of varying flavours, some of them not even battle shields per se (Aldea with its a cloaking system and perhaps another reference to some world wide field on some random planet that blocked transporters but I think it was due to the ore in the ground).

As far as planetary shields capable of repelling firepower go, you only have the UFP's case of Elba II, with the field emitted from one single underground(?) generator and considered defeatable by the full firepower of a non-warship (plus the problems I highlighted but you handwave), and the distant, isolated Voyager: Nightingale case where there is a planetary shield around that planet (located in the delta quadrant), described as a "shield grid" by the Kraylor alien.

What we can see is an utter lack of references to planetary shields despite the very large amount of engagements that happened over the entire course of Star Trek shows and movies, not to count the references that are havily in contradiction with the notion of ibiquitous planetary shields, like for example such as in the case of Ty'Gokor.
Even by the time Ty'Gokor was the most fortified installation in the Klingon empire, no reference was made to any planetary protection when Damar suggested blasting the hell out of the Klingons down there over a very large area. All you got was a reference to the "shielding around the command center."
Regarding Khitomer, in Sins of the Father, they keep mentionning shields used on the entire late colony (2346, some fifty years after the time Accords were signed on this world), which although usual for ships, is not when refering to ground installations, implying the Klingons use several shields to protect such a place. Four thousand Klingons died because of the attack on the colony, so even if it represents a 10% casualty, that would be 40,000 people living there. It's a lot of shields for not so many people on this symbolic world.

Theater shields, phaser banks, torpedo launchers, plus ships and stations in space are the meat and potato of world defenses.




As a sidenote that is largely unrelated to direct planetary defenses: http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/163.htm
TASHA: Deflector shield technology has advanced considerably during the war. Our heat dissipation rates are probably double those of the Enterprise-C, which means we can hang in a firefight a lot longer.
That's from a reality the E-D was thrown into where they (the UFP side) had lost half of Starfleet against the Klingons as a result of an ongoing bitter war.
Interesting ratio.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:12 pm

We could probably continue arguing this for ages and never come to an agreement regarding Chakotay's first sentence, as far as I'm concerned, this is closed.


Yes, it is closed, and you are wrong. You can try to obfuscate with irrelevancies, but the fact remains that Chakotay wasn't bluffing. He warned Annorax that there was a danger in an effort to get Annorax to stand down, and Annorax chose not to listen. The danger came. Case closed.

You argue for a bluff because you think it connects to the next line about shielding planets . . . disparaging Chakotay's threat as a mere deceptive bluff instead of a threat that we all saw proven correct allows you, in your mind, to start wiggling around with belief in that other statement. But, alas, you are wrong there, too.

Chakotay's threats should be taken at face value. The information on temporal shields can be transmitted to the respective homeworlds and spread, allowing planets to be protected. This only logically works if planetary shields exist. Vessel shields and some structure shields can't do the job, and would merely become isolated components which, per the Ram Izad incursion which occurred with a temporally-shielded Voyager running amok, wouldn't represent a death-knell to calculations as you have argued.

You have no case. The fact you won't give up on even the bluff argument just proves you are simply trolling. You are sullying the forum with such behavior right in front of a new and valuable guest. The fact you are trying to redraw my being embarrassed . . . for you and the forum and for me by having to point the basics out to you with varying degrees of patience . . . as an indication of weakness rather than an appeal from a position of vast comparative strength is your own addle-brained error borne of nothing more than sheer desperation.
You have not clarified your statement regarding space civilizations, rural areas and whatnots.


I have no need to. It is clear and accurate. Your evasions and feigned ignorance do not constitute a rebuttal, or even a real reply.
You have also not replied on the projected capacity of planetary shields for the Nihydron and Mawasi that reasonnably shows them to be so weak that they wouldn't matter against the TWS, making Chakotay's remark another piece of pure pretense. Do you have any solid logic to refute that?


Already provided: You have taken a beam of almost unimaginable content and properties, one capable of selectively altering individual molecules, and treated the reaction of some shields against it like it is a laser melting steel. That's prima facie silliness. We don't know anything about the interaction at all.
You have not explained why we should believe that aliens who can't assemble more than two warships (weaker than Voyager) for the defense of their entire species would yet have the resources for deploying mighty planetary shields. It isn't logical.


How many ships, as a percentage, would you have provided to a crazy smelly woman in a broken ship?

Indeed, the entire Romulan Empire sent all of two ships to stop a genocide and war with Earth in Nemesis. Most of the time the Federation sent just one ship to defend itself . . . be it the Code One of Lazarus, the Romulan incident of 2364, et cetera.

Cut the crap.

Oh, and one more thing:
That is to say, it isn't that they needed the weak spot to penetrate the shield, but that they hoped the stress level on the generator might be restrained a bit by penetrating it there.
Why, hello! That is literally what I have been saying since day one. Thanks for catching up! :)


No. At no point have you argued for what I said, which was a specific tech conjecture. Your argument is that Scotty and crew were too dumb to hit the weak spot. The closest you came to what I said was the 50km reference to bleedthrough, which was part of the same 'dumb' position.

Of course, given your scattergun speculating in the thread you can probably find something similar now and claim it is what you meant all along, but that would be additional mere dishonesty.

The debate is over. You were wrong. Thanks for the blog material, though. I shall enjoy making merry of the many examples of dishonest argumentation you provided. And hey, take heart . . . maybe it'll be helpful in future idiot-proofing, since I haven't dealt with one so dedicated or conniving in quite awhile.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Feb 03, 2017 7:08 pm

2046 wrote:
We could probably continue arguing this for ages and never come to an agreement regarding Chakotay's first sentence, as far as I'm concerned, this is closed.


Yes, it is closed, and you are wrong. You can try to obfuscate with irrelevancies, but the fact remains that Chakotay wasn't bluffing. He warned Annorax that there was a danger in an effort to get Annorax to stand down, and Annorax chose not to listen. The danger came. Case closed.
Huh, that's not what Chakotay said. You're oversimplifying.
Maybe there's possibly a final way to really present things so as to make you see what you're defending. Remember that the danger you refer to solely came from within the TWS and nowhere else. Janeway's group had no way to deal some damage on their own. In fact, all that time until the field dropped, they were being owned.
We're dealing with that simple dichotomy about the method coming from outside or within.
You insisted that there couldn't be any bluff because Chakotay was telling the truth, that Janeway knew of a way to deal some damage (to the TWS), despite Annorax's confidence in this being impossible.
So what can that knowledge be and when does it prove to be the truth?
  1. Janeway's group came up with a way to overwhelm, bypass or deactivate the temporal field on their own. It is a self sufficient and tactically relevant knowledge that does not require sabotage or an insider within the Krenim.
    Result: FALSE
  2. Janeway's group knows that the temporal field will be shut down and expose the TWS to enemy fire. It's a tactically relevant knowledge but totally out of control of Janeway's group.
    Result: TRUE
The only way to make Chakotay's true is to have him imply that Janeway could count on the very reliable temporal field to be deactivated by the crew, because that is what happened. Every other claim about "her" knowledge of a way to deal damage would be false.
Meaning that by being honest and correct, Chakotay would have implied to Annorax that someone could betray him.
I claim Chakotay alluded to what is described in option 1. It is straightforward, simple, not risky and yet fits with the objective of convincing Annorax. This makes it a bluff though, adequate to try at that time.
You go with an interpretation that is (or largely includes) option 2: iIt is tactically inept and risks thwarting the whole plan.

You argue for a bluff because you think it connects to the next line about shielding planets
Yes, if Chakotay is in a situation where he's going to bluff, there's no reason to stop there, especially when the second sentence comes shortly after.
. . . disparaging Chakotay's threat as a mere deceptive bluff instead of a threat that we all saw proven correct allows you, in your mind, to start wiggling around with belief in that other statement. But, alas, you are wrong there, too.

Chakotay's threats should be taken at face value. The information on temporal shields can be transmitted to the respective homeworlds and spread, allowing planets to be protected. This only logically works if planetary shields exist.
Or threater shields that can be extended to protect urban areas. Also, it requires said shields, regardless of their size, to be able to withstand the shots from the TWS.
The example from the E-D stretching her shields would tend to show that the wider you stretch them, the weaker they become.
So logically you would actually want to maximize efficiency with smaller coverage.

But that is quite secondary to something else that is quite important.
See, your claim reminds me about the absolutism that was employed by Saxton and Wong for a Base Delta Zero operation, where they relied on the premise that a BDZ required an absurd level of destruction, which was pushed even further on google groups, SBC and here by people who claimed even greater firepower figures, oblivious to the absurd implication that mere sand would be an asset of production that would have to be dealt with; to the amusement of the debators standing against such nonsense.
The same thing happens here.
You say that the planet must be protected, but it's totally false. The planets don't get erased once hit. Only the people and the artificial assets they built (nature remains after a wake, not buildings and people).
We have more than enough evidence to see that anything that is shielded will not vanish from the continuum. So you don't have to protect oceans, rivers, forests, mountains or even every single lost home. You just have to bring the vast majority of your population under protective domes enhanced with temporal sturdiness and you're done.
As much as you can protect a planet by putting some weapons here and there, you can also protect it (that is, defend what would be attacked) by protecting what needs to be protected.
Or are you going to argue for another round on the basis of some literalism? That, for example, when someone says that Earth needs to be protected, it means every single gram of sand in the Sahara for example? Every single cubic meter of salt water in the ocean?
That would be quite silly.

All in all, the aliens also proved to possess terrible shielding against the temporal weapon, and very, very little resources to defend their very historical existence, not just their home world.

So basically, we see that:
  1. planetary shields are not necessary to tactically protect a planet's relevant elements.
  2. alien temporal shielding sucks so much that even a single temporal beam would very likely punch through a planetary shield of an already high power and strength.
  3. aliens have scant resources to protect their very ontological existence.
The evidence and necessity for planetary shields in Year of Hell is absolutely weak.
Vessel shields and some structure shields can't do the job,
Technicaly, if they're strong enough and that you have them in enough quantities to protect people and most artificial assets, they can. Theater shields need not be cramped either, as I already explained.
For example, Voyager proved it by tanking the temporal wake and not suffering a nut from either shield loss or even partial continuum displacement (the TWS pushes things out of the continuum to erase elements from history altogether). And Voyager could resist direct exposition to the beam.

However, regarding the aliens' defensive technology and their shields, their proven weakness and their limited resources certainly does not bode well for their true chances of survival against the TWS. Which means that statistically, Chakotay is indeed making stuff up because we have good reasons to believe that the upgrade alone won't suffice. Nevertheless, he tried imho.
and would merely become isolated components which, per the Ram Izad incursion which occurred with a temporally-shielded Voyager running amok, wouldn't represent a death-knell to calculations as you have argued.
If you pay attention to the calculations, you'd see ethat the wake would have not crossed those 50 LY and not reached Voyager by the end of the day (reports to Annorax always came within the day of an incursion btw).
Please note that I didn't annoy you with the observed wake's speed on screen –essentially ignoring appaling visuals– since that would entirely bury this idea of the wake even having any kind of astronomical incidence because it would be a molasse.
Instead, I used the transcript and Annorax's orders proving that the wake has a clear limited speed not sufficient to reach Voyager within the day of the Ram Izad incursion (and thus before the report gets presented to Annorax).
How the reports get processed, I don't know. It seems to be a contradiction and looks like writers messed up, but then that would hardly strengthen your position because you couldn't rely on a script known to be faulty.
You have no case. The fact you won't give up on even the bluff argument just proves you are simply trolling.
I am sorry if this looks like trolling to you. Contrary to you, I actually do address every single point you make, and when there is a clear misunderstanding, I ask you to reword your claim so I can understand what you meant.
You are sullying the forum with such behavior right in front of a new and valuable guest.
Wait. Are you saying you brought a guest and I'm disrespecting this person??
Come on Robert, you can't possibly be reaching that low... :|
Is there an argumentation fallacy known as Appeal to the Plebe's Support, because you certainly are very fond of using it. :)
Although it seems to be more about a conflation of a soft ad hominem and a quest for a moral high ground.
The fact you are trying to redraw my being embarrassed . . . for you and the forum and for me by having to point the basics out to you with varying degrees of patience . . . as an indication of weakness rather than an appeal from a position of vast comparative strength is your own addle-brained error borne of nothing more than sheer desperation.
That was... lengthy. :/
You have not clarified your statement regarding space civilizations, rural areas and whatnots.


I have no need to. It is clear and accurate. Your evasions and feigned ignorance do not constitute a rebuttal, or even a real reply.
There is neither evasion nor any feigned ignorance. I simply don't understand the heck you were alluding to and to me it sounded like a very silly argument you were making.
So, I already told you that I may have misunderstood you. You clearly see that I haven't understood what you meant (although a hint of paranoïa seems to have you convinced that I do it on purpose). You didn't agree with my interpretation of your remark. Ok, fine.
I ask you then to reword your point.
It's been several posts that you have essentially told me to fuck off. Politely, of course.
Such is not the basis of discussion and you're simply looking for trouble.

You have also not replied on the projected capacity of planetary shields for the Nihydron and Mawasi that reasonnably shows them to be so weak that they wouldn't matter against the TWS, making Chakotay's remark another piece of pure pretense. Do you have any solid logic to refute that?


Already provided: You have taken a beam of almost unimaginable content and properties, one capable of selectively altering individual molecules, and treated the reaction of some shields against it like it is a laser melting steel. That's prima facie silliness. We don't know anything about the interaction at all.
Don't say "already provided" when you never did. I presented the calculation and you never ever bothered addressing it once.
Also, refrain from appealing to incomprehensible technowhatever and needless complications we don't know of (appealing to ignorance, essentially) when it's a rather straightforward issue. We see what a ship shield can do, my method is a rather fair and simple projection of what a bigger and tougher shield would do.
You have not explained why we should believe that aliens who can't assemble more than two warships (weaker than Voyager) for the defense of their entire species would yet have the resources for deploying mighty planetary shields. It isn't logical.


How many ships, as a percentage, would you have provided to a crazy smelly woman in a broken ship?
You mean after an alien female captain of a battered warship came to you with solid evidence that an advanced and very big hostile ship is erasing entire species from the universe by simply shooting at their home worlds, and that said ship will do the same to you? Coming from a woman who also was so serious about it that she pulled your entire defense tech up perhaps a whole century or two by sharing an upgrade she'd have no reason to share with you otherwise?
I don't know.
And you ask me what I'd bring with me to deal with that?
Why. Maybe just a Death Star if I could?

Let's just note that the coalition with the Nihydron and Mawasi was forged on day 226. The last time anything happened before that day was on day 207.
1 to 19 days, say 9, is quite enough for preparation. All in all, these aliens wouldn't exactly be taken by surprise within minutes; they were planning a preemptive attack.
Indeed, the entire Romulan Empire sent all of two ships to stop a genocide and war with Earth in Nemesis.
What data did they have? Did they take the threat seriously? Were they sure that two ships would be enough?
I'm not knowledgeable enough about Nemesis.
Provide material please.
Most of the time the Federation sent just one ship to defend itself . . . be it the Code One of Lazarus, the Romulan incident of 2364, et cetera.
Most incidents? Like the defense of Earth (and all its sand and rocks)? When they were dealing with enemies that had an insane advantage, like, say, a Borg Cube?
Cut the crap.

Oh, and one more thing:
In the case of Elba II, moving to the far side may not have involved the simplistic advantages we are considering. Fir instance, suppose that the concern was that overloading the shield could cause an explosion, itself merely a hypothesis. This could be true anywhere an overload was executed. But maybe the issue was that the Enterprise phasers couldn't be tuned to the precise output to avoid it, whereas hitting the shield on the other side of the planet allowed a little more wiggle room due to the weakness of the shield at that point.
That is to say, it isn't that they needed the weak spot to penetrate the shield, but that they hoped the stress level on the generator might be restrained a bit by penetrating it there.
Why, hello! That is literally what I have been saying since day one. Thanks for catching up! :)


No. At no point have you argued for what I said, which was a specific tech conjecture.
There couldn't be a more glaring proof that you never properly read my posts.
I'm just going to quote one of them wherein I talk about Elba II (one with comments in orange btw, hardly invisible):
(In the following quotation, I corrected the parts where I forgot to properly edit the orange colour tags, some were missing. I also emphasize in a different colour the part that proves that you were essentially parroting me.)
Myself wrote:
I beg to differ, for very obvious reasons.
I covered many of these problems here and here already, but I'm going to provide comments in a different fashion in this thread.
Transcript time. Behold.
Whom Gods Destroy wrote: SCOTT: Mister Sulu, what do your sensors show?
SULU: We can't beam anybody down, sir. The force field on the planet is in full operation, and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off.
SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two. [The first time I read this, without being aware of the planet-wide attribute of the force field, it did make sense as I thought it described a theater shield. But now... either these people are absolute cretins for not figuring out not to shoot right ontop the asylum, or there's something else about that force field that's a wee bit different from a typical shield.]
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?
GARTH: But I've arranged a more merciful end for her because after all, Captain, she is my consort. One tiny crystal implanted in her necklace, a portion of this explosive no bigger than a grain of sand. I propose to detonate it from here. [For the reminder, a vial of that stuff was said by the mad genius to be able to vaporize the entire planet. Not sure how many grains you can put in that vial but it may seem that Garth was overestimating his voodoo juice by a notch or two after all.]
(Marta is left alone, choking.)
GARTH: Poor girl. Poor, dear, suffering child. I will help her now.
(Boom!)

[Bridge]

SULU: There's been an explosion on Elba Two!
SCOTT: Point nine five! [OMG! That's almost... ONE!]
MCCOY: It must've wiped out everything. [A very powerful explosive. For example, grains of antimatter would already weigh several grams, more than enough to generate a hefty multi-kiloton explosion.]
SCOTT: Immediate probe. Is the force field in place, Mister Sulu?
SULU: Yes, sir. Solidly.
UHURA: (at Spock's station) Life continues to exist on the planet. [Despite occuring very close to the dome (Marta had no suit), the dome's still there! We can conclude that only direct fire from a capital ship could get through the shell.]
MCCOY: Got to break through it somehow.
SCOTT: Doctor, I told you we couldn't do it without killing everyone in the asylum dome. [Two elements: 1: implies that they could actually get through the force field, but it would kill all the people in the asylum. 2: in all that time (and to recoup a similar commentary from above), not a single one of them suggested that maybe they should try shooting further away from the dome (5, 20, 100 km away, who knows?) in order to avoid killing people down there beccause of bleedthrough firepower? Sorry, but that makes them be complete morons and it's hard to believe. Unless, for the sake of their intelligence and a sense of respect, that where you shoot on the force field doesn't really matter regarding the unavoidable fatal consequences under the very, very solid dome. Thus hinting that the moment you poke the shield with some blunt force, the asylum housing the shield generator explodes regardless of where you aimed at. Hence the unstable explosive generator "theory".]
MCCOY: I know it, Scotty.
SCOTT: Well, there's one last thing we might try. Perhaps the ship's phasers can cut through a section of the force field at its weakest point. Where did you say that was located, Mister Sulu?
SULU: On the far side of the planet, Mister Scott.
MCCOY: Will it leave a margin of safety for the people below?
SULU: Yes, sir. [Now that is precious. They're planning on drilling a hole through the other side of the planet-wide force field and still are seriously asking about the survival rate of the people stuck under the super sturdy dome! This is impossible to take at face value unless, again, that force field is so fubar that the moment you crack it open, it blows up no matter what... or perhaps if you aim for a weakspot, you needn't apply the full array of the ship's firepower (beams + torps) and you may get through, but without overloading the generator and thus not killing the people bunkered inside a super tough compound on the other side of the world. If we assume that the Enterprise had torpedoes, it is indeed interesting to notice then that they chose to rely on the phasers only, and tried to achieve some kind of "clean cut" by narrowing the beams. Perhaps to really make it efficient and maximize the intensity, reduce the energetic waste from weapon fire and thus lower the risk of a dramatic overloading.]
SCOTT: Prepare to change orbital path, Mister Sulu.
SULU: Orbital co-ordinates released, sir.
SCOTT: Break synchronous orbit. Come to course one four mark six eight.
(after a few moments)
SULU: Course one four mark six eight. Synchronous orbit re-established, sir.
SCOTT: Ship's phasers to narrow beam.
SULU: Ship's phasers ready, sir.
SCOTT: Let's punch a hole in it. Full power. Another blast, full power.
SULU: Force field still holding, sir. [They may continue firing, we don't know. I suppose they would for quite some time. The episode ends quickly after that (perhaps a dozen minutes?). At some point Spock proposes to beam down some people, which strongly suggests that the Enterprise had stoppped firing and failed to get through.]
Thus, unless one agrees with the exploding shield generator and its supplement that it was pushed to insane limits, the episode's plot really runs in full retard'o mode, as evidenced by my earlier comments in the two posts I linked to.
Moving on with your silly accusations (really, please make an effort).
Your argument is that Scotty and crew were too dumb to hit the weak spot. The closest you came to what I said was the 50km reference to bleedthrough, which was part of the same 'dumb' position.

Of course, given your scattergun speculating in the thread you can probably find something similar now and claim it is what you meant all along, but that would be additional mere dishonesty.
Actually, it seems that despite my best and most generous efforts, you were totally off the mark for the whole thread.
For example: "Your argument is that Scotty and crew were too dumb to hit the weak spot."

LOL. No. Never, in fact.
I don't even know where to begin with!
How could I have ever made such a claim, when that's exactly what they do in the episode (shooting at the weak spot), which I have never denied nor had any problem with since day one.
Just to hammer that through, here's what I already said on page 2 (with bright colours, to help you):
Myself wrote: That only concerns Elba and it's pretty much what is described. One single UFP ship, not even a warship, had an experienced crew quite confident (and that is what matters) that they had a chance at piercing the planet-wide shield on its weakest point.
Now let's just imagine an actual warship, or god forbids, more than one!
Myself wrote: I already pointed out that they may last longer. However, your only and single evidence that a planetary shield would hold on for a longer duration is Elba II, which the Enterprise's crew considered possible to pierce at its weakest point with phasers on narrow beam only (worried for the safety of the people) and which, for all intents and purposes, only showed a resistance superior to what the Enterprise would output in a limited timeframe with those restrictions, with absolutely no demonstration that it could even repel the firepower of, say, the equivalent of a flotilla of three warships (twice less than what attacked the Krenim temporal ship for instance). They didn't use a greater firepower because they knew it would kill people down there and for the reminder, there was no obligation to shoot just ontop of the asylum.
The very fact that it was considered possible for one single armed exploration/science ship to put a hole in that shield is all that matters because it puts a firm cap on how sturdy that shield could really be. The fact that less discriminate application of firepower was thought to condemn the people down on Elba II also strongly implies that the Enterprise's full firepower would actually poke a hole.
Then at the very top of page 3...
Myself wrote: It is absolutely clear that Scotty does consider it more than doable to get through the field –he doesn't say they couldn't get through it, period– but that the energy delivered onto it by the Enterprise would be so devastating that it would also kill the people they were trying to save.
And that concern was still very valid in their minds despite the fact that they tried to drill through it by shooting at a point on the opposite side of the world!
You completely disregard that too.

Then, how do we know that they're not putting everything in the attempt that failed? Because it's written in plain text above. If they were to brute-force their way through the field, it would kill people inside the dome. So they aim for a weakspot, use narrow beams, and try to get through knowing fully well, as per Scotty's previous remarks, that they must be careful about the power they put into that. Considering Scotty's two first lines of dialogue I quoted, that he says they could get through it but it would kill all people, it is quite clear that they wouldn't put everything into the weapons because of how dangerous the operation is. That's precisely why they weakest point in the field seemed a good option.
All of which also provides more evidence that "your" little suggestion was nothing new to me.
You're free to check on the rest of pages 3 and 4.
Now that we're done with that grotesque lie of yours, let's explain again what my problems are, since obviously you seem to start computing simple concepts after the tenth post or so.

What I had problems with, which is already heavily documented by now, concerned the lack of decision to shoot at another spot instead of right on top the dome so as to avoid to hit the dome with any eventual bleedthrough the moment the beam (or torps) would punch through (which was even irrelevant to the idea of trying a weaker spot), and the need to check for the safety of people located underneath a super dome that could tank nearby nuclear firepower when shooting at a shield on the other side of the planet.

Geez, it's not like I have already typed that shit a billion times (starting with an older thread wherein we already discussed this case)!
So please show a bit more honesty and try to read correctly.
The debate is over. You were wrong. Thanks for the blog material, though. I shall enjoy making merry of the many examples of dishonest argumentation you provided. And hey, take heart . . . maybe it'll be helpful in future idiot-proofing, since I haven't dealt with one so dedicated or conniving in quite awhile.
I couldn't care less about your blog but I sincerely hope you'll find all the online support you need over there. <3

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Sat Feb 04, 2017 7:37 pm

1. Annoying as you are, here, I still wanna play poker with you. You'd be so confused at yourself if you tried to bluff that your poker face would involve drool.

2. You do a lot of quoting and typing yet still didn't present anything contrary to what I said. I presented a specific and nuanced idea of specific frequency technobabble. Hitting the shield on the opposite side of the planet at its weakest point would obviously prevent bleedthrough, meaning that is obviously not the problem. Overloading the generator by penetrating the shield should be the case no matter where it was overloaded, barring more complication or nuance to the idea (hence mine), so that simplistic idea is obviously not the problem either. And our characters aren't stupid, so we should also discount that idea unless we literally have no other choice. We have other choices.

My idea was versus your suggestion that they were dumb ("absolute cretins”), even referencing how the closest you got to it was your 50km bleedthrough notion (actually "5, 20, 100"), whereas bleedthrough isn't the problem as I see it. Your response was to provide quotes largely confirming my memory of your posts while claiming I was lying about them.

Your alternative, which I did not mention, was the claim that this was some radical one-off shield that did not apply elsewhere (thus allowing you to pretend this is not an example of a Federation planetary shield). You have suggested it was a found alien shield or tech testbed or whatever, all to evade the basic facts.

Seriously, though, the spew of BS on your part has been so varied and voluminous that, recounting it from memory, I am liable to leave out vast tracts of exceedingly well-fertilized land.

3. Just a little giggle, but I like how you act offended that I consider you to have engaged in sleazily dishonest argumentative gymnastics in the thread. See, I am old enough to remember when you were arguing that the Enterprise wasn't a warship because you thought it allowed you to try to throw shade on the Elba II shield, despite the Enterprise being the better of every other major territorial power's warships that we saw. When called on that you even doubled down.

Now, a page or two later, when you need the reverse, you claim Voyager is a warship.

4. Your nonsensical idea of a partially-shielded planet with only urban areas protected is actually kinda neat from an environmentalist perspective. Annorax's evil reforestation beam would be great for bringing back lush wildlife areas, restoring previously-tapped resources that had been mined or drilled for, et cetera. Hell, it would be an epic reloader of a known resource . . . imagine an asteroid or something you mine for dilithium. Take it all, hit the temporal shields, zap the asteroid, and go again. Limitless resources! What a nice thing for Annorax to do for his enemies.

In any case , "Annorax: temporal eco-terrorist" is a unique take on things.

5. You accuse me of redefining "planet" in line with BDZ redefinition of "asset of production" (at the same time as you amusingly accuse me of literalism and also not discussing quotes, which is a delightfully self-contradictory set of accusations). Yet it is you who are redefining "planet" to mean "some people and urban areas", when that clearly won't do the job per the episode, at the same time as you work very hard to avoid having to deal with the statements as provided . . . *by your own admission* (regarding Chakotay and your bluff argument).

6. The only person who needs help here is you. However, I've found here that if I assume you are joking and being nonsensical on purpose to get a reaction from me, your posts make more sense. Of course, that is one definition of trolling, sooo……

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:30 am

2046 wrote:1. Annoying as you are, here, I still wanna play poker with you. You'd be so confused at yourself if you tried to bluff that your poker face would involve drool.
Exactly!
2. You do a lot of quoting and typing yet still didn't present anything contrary to what I said.
I don't have to provide anything "contrary" when you plagiarized me.
I presented a specific and nuanced idea of specific frequency technobabble. Hitting the shield on the opposite side of the planet at its weakest point would obviously prevent bleedthrough, meaning that is obviously not the problem. Overloading the generator by penetrating the shield should be the case no matter where it was overloaded, barring more complication or nuance to the idea (hence mine), so that simplistic idea is obviously not the problem either. And our characters aren't stupid, so we should also discount that idea unless we literally have no other choice. We have other choices.
The first paragraph I quoted from you was nothing short of plagiarism and that's the only bit I commented on, proving it was nothing new to me.

You want to talk about the rest of the post?
OK. The paragraph that followed the one I quoted was your attempt at infusing silly gibberish as to ridicule and obfuscate a general idea that anyone could quickly understand. The treknobabble you added was utterly irrelevant.
Or, as I formerly said in my reply to your post: "Such conjecture isn't necessary though."
My idea was versus your suggestion that they were dumb ("absolute cretins”), even referencing how the closest you got to it was your 50km bleedthrough notion (actually "5, 20, 100"), whereas bleedthrough isn't the problem as I see it. Your response was to provide quotes largely confirming my memory of your posts while claiming I was lying about them.
Nope. I simply said that the idea, the principle detailed in your paragraph I quoted, was nothing new to me. You said BS. I proved you wrong.
"Your" idea couldn't come versus my suggestion they were dumb because:
1. I came with it first and it wasn't brought forth in opposition with the other points I made back then.
2. Shooting at a weak spot wasn't a problem with me, as the stupid behaviour was noted for two other things that I already listed enough times, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.

Still, it is abundantly clear that you have not understood what I had a problem with, which is really baffling considering how many times I detailed the issues and the fact that I even went as far as wedging my coloured comments right into the transcript as to directly show what I had a problem with.

But here comes something interesting; Now you say "bleedthrough isn't the problem as I see it."
So what is it? What other than bleedthrough could possibly worry Scott so much that if they shot at the force field and put a hole through it, it would kill people in the asylum?
Your alternative, which I did not mention, was the claim that this was some radical one-off shield that did not apply elsewhere (thus allowing you to pretend this is not an example of a Federation planetary shield). You have suggested it was a found alien shield or tech testbed or whatever, all to evade the basic facts.
Evade what facts? The facts that we never ever see such a shield again –or even before– throughout the whole UFP?
What you refer to was a random idea I threw later in the thread as to why we only found that shield here, because the true fact remains that it is unique, as far as we know.
Seriously, though, the spew of BS on your part has been so varied and voluminous that, recounting it from memory, I am liable to leave out vast tracts of exceedingly well-fertilized land.
I knew you'd come with that especially lame excuse considering that I presented my idea several times in the thread already.
Eventually, that you had a memory loss could be excused, but when you're shown being plain wrong, just acknowledge it and move on please instead of trying to defend yourself just for the tiresome sake of it.
3. Just a little giggle, but I like how you act offended that I consider you to have engaged in sleazily dishonest argumentative gymnastics in the thread. See, I am old enough to remember when you were arguing that the Enterprise wasn't a warship because you thought it allowed you to try to throw shade on the Elba II shield, despite the Enterprise being the better of every other major territorial power's warships that we saw. When called on that you even doubled down.
Seriously. It's a well equipped science vessel but that's a warship. It has not such a function and wasn't designed for that. You had time to properly address that point back then on pages 2 & 3. You didn't. I'm not going to return to that, thanks.
Now, a page or two later, when you need the reverse, you claim Voyager is a warship.
I based my opinion on what I read on internet and some arguments regarding the nature of the E-C, and people opposed the E-C to ships such as the Defiant and Voyager (I think it was on Quora). It just turns out that it was quite a fluke because now looking for more opinions, some say Voyager is a science vessel, although there's been quite some debate regarding the logic of using such a ship on the type of first mission she had to deal with (in the Badlands?), at a time of severe militarization of the UFP's assets. When you consider the ratio size / weapons, it's also pointing towards a warship design with, heck, some labs tacked on for an official civil veneer.

Now –and you're going to hate me for that– this fact would actually turn out to reinforce my point bceause, regarding the comparison of ship shields, we'd have an UFP science vessel largely outmatching alien warships, which in return paints an ever worse picture of these aliens' shielding technology.

Notice, though, that Voyager being a warship or science vessel wasn't essential to my point. As a matter of fact, the only moment I refer to Voyager as a warship is in the latest posts of page 4:

"You mean after an alien female captain of a battered warship came to you with solid evidence that..."

4. Your nonsensical idea of a partially-shielded planet with only urban areas protected is actually kinda neat from an environmentalist perspective. Annorax's evil reforestation beam would be great for bringing back lush wildlife areas, restoring previously-tapped resources that had been mined or drilled for, et cetera. Hell, it would be an epic reloader of a known resource . . . imagine an asteroid or something you mine for dilithium. Take it all, hit the temporal shields, zap the asteroid, and go again. Limitless resources! What a nice thing for Annorax to do for his enemies.

In any case , "Annorax: temporal eco-terrorist" is a unique take on things.
Honestly I guess that's a very cool side effect.
It does not even need to be used in a terrorist way, although I'd be worried about the overall balance of the universe's total energy and mass regarding the use of this device in a civilian way, if only to regenerate mined moons and asteroids for example. But the idea is definitely interesting!

Just throwing another wild guess here. Considering how this could be a problem regarding the notion of the impossibility to add or remove energy or mass from the universe, perhaps the restauration was temporary and generated a temporal debt that would have consequences in the future? Otherwise, the recreated matter must come from somewhere else, like another reality or perhaps subspace?
5. You accuse me of redefining "planet" in line with BDZ redefinition of "asset of production" (at the same time as you amusingly accuse me of literalism and also not discussing quotes, which is a delightfully self-contradictory set of accusations). Yet it is you who are redefining "planet" to mean "some people and urban areas", when that clearly won't do the job per the episode, at the same time as you work very hard to avoid having to deal with the statements as provided . . . *by your own admission* (regarding Chakotay and your bluff argument).
As expected. I said you interpreted it in absolute terms and gave examples of why that is not necessary. It's actually very well expected from characters that when refering to the whole of defense of cities, people and other industrial assets of an entire planet, most people would just say "planet". That is, after all, what characters do most of the time when talking about other worlds (Earth, Vulcan, Bajor, Romulus, etc.).
Fact remains that the complete protection of a planet is totally unnecessary, proved by the very episode.
6. The only person who needs help here is you. However, I've found here that if I assume you are joking and being nonsensical on purpose to get a reaction from me, your posts make more sense. Of course, that is one definition of trolling, sooo……
...


Now, your little formating choice is interesting but it's just a way for you to avoid replying to points I make. I am still waiting for your counter-argumentation or an answer on:

- My projected planetary shield's strength calculation on the basis of what a ship's shields of the same species demonstrate against the TWS's temporal beam (aside from appealing to irrelevant obfuscation by treknobabble).
- The calculated temporal wake's speed and the very high chances that Voyager was not reached by the time of the "98% restauration" report.
- A description of the Nemesis case you refered to as counter-evidence as to why we should expect no more than two warships to defend an entire species from being totally erased in one shot.
- What you meant about rural areas and space civilizations regarding your plea in favour of planetary shields for the Mawasi's and Nihydron's home worlds.

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Re: Planetary Defenses in Star Trek

Post by 2046 » Sun Feb 05, 2017 5:15 pm

I don't have to provide anything "contrary" when you plagiarized me.


Actually you do when your claim is that I am now making your same argument (or now "plagiarizing", because you want to escalate the stupid) and I point out that you're wrong in that claim again. You need to demonstrate something, not just claim it and post a lot of text that does nothing to aid you in your goal. All you are doing here is trying to reimagine your posts to follow my suggestion which was in opposition to your dumb characters (and alien/unique Elba shield) nonsense, precisely as I predicted you would.

The general premise you aim for is that the Elba shield is different/strange or weak/useless and, by either or both, not applicable to other worlds at all. You argue this via the assorted nonsense discussed and any other shade or mud you can desperately grasp for.

My premise is that the shield is normal and fine for its purpose, and while it can be penetrated with bad results of unspecified cause, perhaps unique to Elba thanks to the poison and dome, your nonsense arguments are still nonsense.
the stupid behaviour was noted for two other things


Oopsies. You forgot you were trying not to argue dumb characters, here?
So what is it? What other than bleedthrough could possibly worry Scott so much that if they shot at the force field and put a hole through it, it would kill people in the asylum?


I thought you were the one saying that I wasn't reading your posts. Oy. Did you seriously miss the whole concept of generator overload? I described it as a pressure cooker in the dome ages ago.

Bleedthrough damage and generator overload are two possibilities, though those aren't the only ones. For all we know the mere power drain could cause issues with environmental controls, or whatever. We are not told the mechanism of death so must conjecture, but that doesn't mean we get to just make stuff up and assume characters are stupid for not following it, as you do. Be reasonable, for a change. You'll start agreeing with me a lot more.

I knew you'd come with that especially lame excuse


I am not excusing anything. I correctly recalled the gist of the nonsense of yours I was focusing on, even if I got the digits (50 vs. 5/20/100) wrong. They weren't especially relevant to the point so your fixation on that sort of thing is mere evasiveness and dishonesty.
Now –and you're going to hate me for that– this fact would actually turn out to reinforce my point


LOL . . . thanks for demonstrating the talking-out-both-sides-of-your-mouth thing.
Fact remains that the complete protection of a planet is totally unnecessary, proved by the very episode.


Incorrect. I have demonstrated that your spot-protection concept won't have any effect based on examples from the episode that you haven't seen and pretend not to understand.
Now, your little formating choice is interesting but it's just a way for you to avoid replying to points I make.


Maybe if you weren't just trolling I might spend more time.
I am still waiting for your counter-argumentation or an answer on:


1. Request irrational. I might as well discuss with you how many electrons via copper conductor it takes to kill a man. That's not how it works.
2. Nonsensical. The Krenim temporal weapon-ship altered things across thousands of parsecs, and presumably even beyond. The wake is the trigger for the change as observed. Your calculations are faulty due to incorrect premises.
3. Go watch some Star Trek. I don't have to educate you on how to debate my point. Two ships were sent to stop a genocide and resulting interstellar war. This is basic to the movie. If you have a counterargument, make it. Otherwise, shut your trap.
4. Already answered, as you have already admitted.

In any case, the only reason I am replying at this point is just to mock and embarrass you. I really shouldn't do that, though, because it is just feeding the troll with the attention you crave.

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